‘Golden Times’ for NASA in danger due to substantial cuts Trump

« A new golden age for science and discoveries, » promised Jared Isaacman, billionaire, pilot and space tourist. A week later, this dream of Donald Trumps candidate to lead NASA seems to be gone. Recently a budget proposal from the White House leaked before 2026, in which NASA is cut very firmly. The budget goes from 25 billion dollars to 20 billion. The heaviest cuts are for the science directorate, the budget of which is almost halved: from 7.5 billion to 3.9 billion.

Earlier, NASA had to cancel 420 million dollars in contracts under pressure from the prohibition of policy in the field of diversity, equality and inclusion of the Trump government. NASA’s promise to take a woman of color and a non-American with the new lunar landing, disappeared silently from the website in March.

« This budget proposal involves a complete dismantling of the scientific fleet of NASA and the pipeline of future missions, » says Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society, an American organization that lobbying for space research. The extreme cutback fits in with the pattern with which the Trump government tackles science.

On the chopping block

The consequences are substantial: the webb and hubble spacecraft, large scientific and public successes, continue to be supported. But the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an infrared telescope of 4.3 billion dollars that is ready for the launch, goes into the mothballs.

There is also an end to the Mars Sample Return project (MSR), a collaboration with the European space agency ESA to pick up Mars rock monsters. The Marskarretje Perseverance has already collected 43 tubes with interesting rock with that goal, but they will therefore remain on Mars for the time being. Also on the chopping block: the Davinci mission to Venus, and Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where about ten thousand people work.

Exomars, a multi-teasing European Marskar project, may also have to go to the drawing table again, after the launch was already postponed in 2022 because the Russian contribution was released. NASA already withdrew the promised rocket launch for the mission in 2013, to return to it in 2024, which is now uncertain again.

« It is very difficult to respond to this, » says Joost Carpaij of the Netherlands Space Office, responsible for Dutch contributions to the European space programs. « Because this is a leaked proposal from the White House, and also because (the appointment of) Isaacman has not yet been confirmed. It is therefore very difficult to predict where the 50 percent will fall. And even whether they will fall, because the congress can still reverse cuts. But in general we always think about the possibility that partners will fall away. »

New lunar race

A rocket launch such as for Exomars can possibly be arranged elsewhere, or to pay out of your own pocket, says Carpaij, « but if the NASA share is very large, then you have to go back to the drawing table. And sometimes you might consider it at all. » The latter probably applies to the MSR project.

The senators that Isaacman asked during his hearing had very different concerns, about manned space travel and a new moon race. At his withdrawal in January, President Donald Trump loudly announced that « we go to Mars ». Colonizing our neighboring planet is one of the long dreams of Trumps Secondant Elon Musk, founder of the SpaceX space company.

That did not seem to be strips with Artemis, the official NASA travel plan, to deliver Americans to the moon again as quickly as possible. In 2022, an uniminent Orion Capsule flew around the moon. A flight around the moon with four people on board is planned for next year, a moon landing later in the decade.

Isaacman was critically questioned about this by TED Cruz, Republican Senator on behalf of Texas, the home of Nasa’s Astronautscentrum in Houston. « Make no mistake, the Chinese communist party has been clear about her desire to dominate in space, » Kruz warned. « We are not heading for the next space race, he is already there. »

China now has its own space station, a successful program of robotic Chang’e-Manmissions, and plans to send Chinese to the moon before 2030, with a manned basis on the moon as the final goal.

Candidate director Isaacman saved cabbage and goat: he promised to bring Americans to the moon as quickly as possible, but also thought that NASA should go to Mars as quickly as possible. He kept himself on a permanent American presence on the moon. Isaacman was critical of the route followed, with the gigantic, very expensive SLS rocket that NASA developed for this goal.

Fighter pilots

Billionaire Isaacman (1983) is not a typical Trump-Lakei. As a sixteen -year -old he started a credit card company in 1999 in the basement of his parental home that grew into the successful payment company Shift4. He then founded a company that maintains a fleet of fighter jets to train combat pilots for the American armed forces.

Isaacman himself also likes to fly, including in his Russian MIG-29, the only one in the US. He participates in air shows and has had more than 7,000 flying hours. In 2021 and 2024 he paid and made two space flights on board SpaceX Dragon capsules, and became the first private astronaut to take a space walk. His assets are estimated at 1.9 billion dollars.

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